Feeding time

Yesterday we sat in the bar of a restaurant by the marina, waiting the couple of hours to watch a large fish being fed.

Across the bay the sun sank, tropical mountains faded to blue clouds and yachts swapped places – exhausted, sun-reddened, madly-waving day-trippers exchanged for elegantly dressed, sun-reddened, madly-waving evening-trippers.

The larger boats were greeted by the clang of a bell from behind the bar (and much mad waving from both shore and sea sides) as they carried their catches of scuba-divers and snorkelers back home. A day ago (two days now) we’d been a part of all that. Out snorkeling on the outer reef.

Over an hour out, just before the ocean shelf takes a long, cold plunge into the blue-black waters of the coral sea, we took a long, but not so cold plunge of our own into the glowing turquoise waters of the reef to be instantly surrounded by fish.

Snorkeling is an odd experience. The instant you are in you forget about the above-water side of things – other than for a quick glance at the ship to get your bearings and get a feel for where your fellow mer-people were – this turns out to be a less than smart move later on when you realise that the sun occupied that forgotten part of the world, and your back is now a photographic negative of whatever you were wearing. (‘Trunks – a study in pink and white.’)

Fish are, on the whole, pretty fearless of humans, with whole shoals seeming to form around you as you swim (by swim, I mean of course: flail elegantly whilst trying not to crash into the oblivious snorkeler who has just appeared next to you and is affording you a close up view of their flippers in action). A reef-shark moves effortlessly below you on an errand of its own. The water filled with clicks and pops as parrot fish gnaw away at the reef.

The reef itself is incredible. You float a matter of feet above it, suddenly to find it plunging away in blues, greens and browns, tables, horns and boulders surrounded by fish and shrimp. In a crevice at the bottom the sand moves in slow breaths as something large rests, hidden.

The journey back is a blur. We ddin’t hear the bell or take part in the burst of mad waving – we didn’t even register that solid ground was on its way to meet us.

On reconsideration, sat at the bar, there’s something a little brutal about snacking on prawns, oysters, fish and chips while waiting to see a fish fed (a little like setting up a barbeque in a petting zoo). The clock hits five and large tv screens flicker to life as the fish-feeder drags a fish carcass out onto the decking and slices it – the smaller bits flung into the water as an appetiser – tying the head to a thick length of rope and plunging it into the bay. All this is repeated across the screens dotting the place.

We crane and wait, the audience getting as close to a rapt silence as Aussies ever get (a rapt hubub or rapt clamour just doesn’t sound right). Fifteen minutes later it’s clear that ths fish isn’t going to make an entrance today. A couple of smaller, palm-sized fish nibble apologetically at the floating food before looking embarassed and dashing off quickly.

It’s hard to feel let down though. We’ve seen more fish in the last day or two than we have in the last year (or two). And, besides, I’m keen to get home and write up my petting zoo barbeque business plan.

Crocodiles and stubbies

Well, today was a day of new experiences. We actually tore ourselves away from the delicious palm edged pool that our apartment looks over to head to the beach to swim, bravely joining the dozens of people already in the water and ignoring the big stinger and crocodile warnings that are plastered up along the beach. A debate raged about how safe it actually was to get into the clear warm (25 degree c) water of the Coral Sea, and Alex had me finally convinced that no, it wasn’t stinger season, and seriously, crocodiles??

So the siren that started wailing, in proper Jaws stylee about 30 seconds after we arrived at the beach was a bit of a worry, and the Aussie life guards shouting at people to get out of the water didn’t help to ease my concerns, especially as the beach was subsequently closed for 24hrs as, you guessed it, a saltwater croc was swimming up and down the shore.

It must be the great flying spaghetti monster being all Alanis Morrisette on us – one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen, and you can’t even put a toe in the water…

So back to the pool and a chilled beer – Jenni, I’ll have one for you xx

I’m melting…

Been here over a week now and still haven’t got used to the roughly 29 degree heat and pretty high humidity. Fortunately there is a lot of a/c and cold Asahi beer to help chill things down a little.

We’ve moved now to our second ryokan (Japanese style hotel), and my very favourite thing about our new place has to be the Japanese baths. You get washed under the shower (or by pouring buckets of luke warm water over your head – fabulous when you get in from a hectic day`s sightseeing), and then get into your very own infinity bath overlooking the zen garden – not kidding.

The bath is lovely and hot, soothes away all your aches and pains from walking everywhere (curse of hanging out with Alex, this walking everywhere thing, even in London), and then you cool down again by pouring cooler water over yourself once you`re out.

Not sure the Japanese go for that last bit, all a little Finnish, but hey let`s call it fusion bathing. Am going to go now and have a cold one, and maybe start doing some origami.

Seriously.

🙂

Tokyo baby!!

Well we arrived a couple of days ago now, and I’m happy to report Tokyo is amaaaazing 🙂 currently updating this from the Apple store opposite all the very posh department stores in Ginza. Jet lag is sadly still with me, though I did manage to sleep until ooh 4.30 this morning – for those with small children, I feel your pain.

We’ve not been sat around you’ll be pleased to hear, so for me, for now, this is my top things I’ve learned in Toky0 – in no particular order (all written down in your book Rae 🙂 )

1. That I appear to be travelling with Tom Cruise according to a very nice but clearly visually challenged lady sat next to us at dinner last night.

2. That lamposts play music to you – it was an orchestral version of ‘Memories’ from Cats on our first night.

3. If you ask the fortune telling sticks at Senso-ji temple what the fates hold in store for you, don’t expect a jolly answer (!!). I’m comforted by the fact that Alex’s was just as bad as mine.

4. People are wonderfully friendly and the TOTAL language barrier just isn’t even an issue.

5. That dodgy looking restaurants serve fabulous noodles.

6. That there’s a statue of Edward Jenner in the grounds of the Tokyo National Museum (that one’s for you James, they’re pretty happy here with the whole smallpox vaccine thing).

7. That it is possible to sleep well on a 5cm thick futon on tatami mats with a rice filled pillow, and that the futons are long enough, hurray!!

Love it love it love it…

Cxx

That John Denver song makes no sense…

So, the flat is packed up (thank you Rae), and its contents are now at Mum’s in Kent. I’m not sure she quite realised how taken over the garage and the small spare room would be, we just have to hope she doesn’t e-bay it all before we get back. 

So we drove down from Battersea yesterday and at some point on the A21 south towards Tunbridge Wells, the words and sadly the tune (I blame your poor musical choices Dad) to ‘Leaving on a jet plane’ kept running through my head (an ear worm I think the Germans call it). Now the words really don’t make that much sense – ‘don’t know when I’ll be back again’ – well why not? Where on earth was he going? And if he hated to go that much he should just have cancelled the sodding ticket as far as I’m concerned.

Funnily enough, Alex got fairly sick of my external monologue pretty soon, so I kept the rest of the analysis of the song to myself  – as it is we haven’t actually left yet, and I’d like him to still be talking to me at least till our second country.

So here’s to sumo, Hello Kitty and sleeping on futons that are bound to be too small for us, and to blog posts that will probably be quite thoughtful and considered from Alex, and just rambling nonsense from me. Feel free, dear reader, to skip to the interesting stuff, I’ll never know…

The map is not the territory.

Almost since we first started talking about this trip we’ve had a map – one of those big wall-maps of the world. As we planned and re-planned our route around the globe we’d plot it on the map using trails of thread and sticky notes.

The masthead photo of this blog is a close-up photo of just a little bit of that criss-crossed map: the little bit we will be rapidly flying away from at around this time on Monday.